


when the night falls (loneliness calls)

by sexonastick



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29017485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexonastick/pseuds/sexonastick
Summary: High up in Atlas, the world moves to a set and relentless rhythm, with everything carefully balanced. Young Winter Schnee wishes that she knew how to move through this life as easily as her mother seems to.
Comments: 17
Kudos: 28





	when the night falls (loneliness calls)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is set during Winter's childhood, so consider all the warnings that would apply there. Abuse is implied more than shown, but is prevalent.

*

Winter isn’t fond of dances.

As a member of the Atlas elite, which father says they are, it’s been her responsibility to attend public events for as long as she can remember. There are dinners and parties several times a month, all of them hosted by people her parents don’t really seem to like but cannot avoid. Liking the people or the occasion isn’t the point, after all. Other people aren’t there to be enjoyed or admired; relationships are just another form of currency, to be exchanged for something else. 

Any event in Atlas can’t really be successful without a Schnee to grace it with their presence. Naturally, favors are extended. Offers are made, between father and whoever or whatever else. Perhaps another company will cut their prices on needed tools or cargo. Another business might leverage their position to push a competitor’s prices up. Maybe a member of the council could propose to lower levies on shipments of Dust to other kingdoms. 

All this in exchange for the public approval of such an important family. Offers often double during campaign season. 

This is just another part of the dance. Step, one two, one two three.

Winter isn’t very good at this part, either at the parties or in most other social situations. She lacks the instinct for deception of others. It’s already so much effort to cultivate calm and control inside herself, to project a neutral normality. If she’s expected to do even more than that, to change herself into something more coercive and direct, then she is inevitably doomed to failure.

Not that she understands any of this at first. All Winter knows is that her presence is expected at gatherings where she always feels several steps behind everyone else. Like a key made for a lock that won’t turn, even once fit inside its place. 

That’s enough to leave her dazed and uncertain, and the feeling only grows as she gets older. 

It takes years to fully realize why they must attend these events and what there is to gain. It takes her even longer to comprehend that the only one to benefit, as it is with most things in their family, is her father. 

Even with all the clear signs on the surface, Winter couldn’t see what was happening in the darkness underneath. She was a child, of course, but it’s something more than that. Some people are made for a specific role in life and in the world. They feel the rhythm pulsing all around them and step into the path. They join the dance.

Mother has the instincts for it, and always has. She understands and masters her movements. The rhythm of this life comes so naturally, she doesn’t have to count her steps. When she and father aren’t busy arguing, she can smile in a way that’s convincing, especially to strangers. It does enough, at least, to assure all the outsiders that surround them that the Schnees are happy to be here, even if father quickly disappears into a crowd of busy businessmen and Winter can never hide her uncomfortable scowl from her face.

Mother squeezes her hand, as if that’s enough to calm her nerves. “Come on, Winter,” she says. “One quick turn around the dance floor with me.” Just here, in this light, the smile could almost convince even Winter herself.

She could believe that they are a happy, normal family. It even feels like a kind of game, this agreement between them. They will pretend that everything is fine.

They will convince these people that the Schnees are happy to be here, are happy at all. She will be the perfect daughter to a perfect mother and father. The deals will all go through, step, one two. They walk once around the dance floor and Winter takes her cue to join another group of girls and boys her own age, or nearly so.

She stands straight, just like father always tells her. 

She listens carefully to everything said and answers only when spoken to directly.

Her words are chosen carefully and precisely. Each word is its own meticulous move, like in a game of chess. “And what does your father do?” she asks the closest child, just as father has instructed she do this evening.

“Who cares?” they answer and Winter realizes she recognizes the exact expression of disdain on their face from other Marigolds she’s met.

“She’s a Schnee,” another voice chimes in from somewhere behind Winter’s shoulder, though she doesn’t dare turn her head to look. That would show too much emotion, and would give the game away. “If you want to brag about your family and money, don’t bother. Everyone already knows.”

Step, step, stumble.

Winter tries to catch her mother’s eye again through the press and turn of the crowd, in search of a lifeline or an escape, but it’s no use. She isn’t looking. Mother’s smile is fixed on some other point in the room.

By the time Winter’s focus returns to the group surrounding her, they’ve started to laugh at something, or someone. She isn’t sure what or why, but instinct says that it might be her.

*

In the week leading up to her first day of schooling, Winter practices talking to herself in the mirror. It’s going to be different than time spent with her tutors, who have only cared about what she might know or do. Other children expect other things. They want her to be soft and pliant in a way unbecoming of a Schnee, but barring that she must find some alternative modes of communication. It isn’t easy.

In fact, one might say that it alludes her completely.

Mother finds her one afternoon, practicing her smile in the reflective glint of the stairwell railing. Winter isn’t sure if it’s the distortion of the angle that makes her expression so unnerving, or if that’s how she always appears when trying to look relaxed.

It isn’t at all convincing. 

“What’re you doing?” mother asks, trying to hide a smile behind her hand. 

This one, at least, seems genuine. 

It’s even enough to inspire the same out of Winter. She feels the expression tug the corners of her mouth, the way she eases into something close to comfort, but when she turns her head again to view her own face reflected it’s already gone. Just like that, in a blink.

Winter stares at herself for a long and quiet moment.

It’s hard to say what she’s doing. Why things that mother finds so easy are hard for her. How to explain a lack of something that’s meant to be innate. Why even a smile, which seems effortless for others, leaves her feeling strange and out of place. 

But mother places a gentle hand atop her head and Winter’s thoughts fade away, drawn out like loose strands of hair wound round and round fingers, looped back again behind her ear. 

She looks up into her mother’s face and finds her smiling still.. “Nervous about school?”

“A little,” Winter admits, since father isn’t here to hear this weakness. 

Mother nods and her fingers brush more hair back from Winter’s face, a gentle repetition. “So was I at your age.”

It feels impossible to imagine mother as any age but the one she’s at now, but especially picturing her as young as Winter once. All she can do is offer a noncommittal grunt as her mind tries to wrap around the concept of time and how it changes things and people.

“And do you know what I did?”

Winter grunts again, but then tries with words. “No, what?”

“You need to find something else to focus on.” For the first time, Winter notices something else glinting in mother’s hand, the one further away from Winter’s face. She’s holding something, a long slender bottle. The liquid inside sways lightly, as if to a slow rhythm that Winter can’t hear. “Do you know what I mean?”

She has to blink and refocus her gaze back on mother instead of the bottle. Only then does Winter realize that mother herself is swaying slightly too. 

“No,” she admits, her voice smaller now.

“You will,” mother says, and her fingers drift away as if lifted in a passing breeze, a drawn out sigh.

Winter turns her head to gauge her own reflection, to see if she’s started smiling. 

She blinks, but nothing changes. 

When she looks again, mother is gone.

*

Winter is fond of classes. It turns out that most of her time in school is spent on studies instead of socializing. It’s not the impression her father gave of his own school days, but it fits her just fine. If anything, she thrives. When the movement is explained to you, when the structure is already in place, it’s easy to follow along with the rhythm. Winter doesn’t have her own internal calculations, not just yet, but her mimicry is improving.

Even so, she doesn’t always follow after her peers. They’re so eager for the class to end, to gather in the hallways and gossip. 

It’s unnecessary and frankly it’s often quite dull. Most of them have nothing interesting to say. She only bothers making friends at all to please her mother, who has begun to ask questions. 

When dinner began one night with father raising his voice and leaving the table to attend business matters in the other room, mother poured herself another glass of wine and asked about Winter’s day.

Her smile is there, it’s always there, reflected and refracted through the glass as she takes another drink. “Are you making any friends?”

“Of course,” Winter lies. 

She feels guilty, keeping the truth from her mother. A part of her wants to take the words back, to make amends. She wants to dance, but she doesn’t know how.

So she lies, and she tries. She really does try.

She talks to the other girls and boys and they all pretend to like her, because she is a Schnee. It’s obvious to her when they’re only pretending; their smiles are all less convincing than her mother’s. Maybe it’s the lack of practice. 

Maybe someday someone else will smile at her and she can believe it, for a little while.

*

That day comes faster than she expects.

It starts with a worry, with mother pulling her aside to say, “Winter, your father and I have something to tell you.”

It’s never good when it’s something they both know or care about.

Sometimes father has his idea of lessons, accompanied with harsh words but even harder truths. They are instructive, at least. Time alone with her father teaches Winter clearly what to do and, even more so, what not to. Mother offers even more wisdom and guidance, as gently as she knows how.

When it’s the two of them together, it sours. Usually, eventually, there is shouting.

Winter feels her heart beating faster, just at the thought.

“Oh?” is all she says, wanting to hide any quiver in her voice.

“You’re going to have a little brother,” father says, his voice careful and precise in the exact way it is when he’s anticipating a certain right answer. 

“Or a sister,” her mother says, soft but stubborn. 

That isn’t the answer he wanted, and it shows on his face. He looks angry, mustache twitching, so Winter cuts in before he can answer, before his voice or hand can raise. “Oh, a brother would be nice.”

His eyes move back to her. “Yes.” He straightens and he smiles in a way that does not reach his eyes. “You’ll learn a lot from a young brother, you know. All about leadership and courage.” He waves his hand. “And how to… lead yourself, I suppose. To lead him.”

Her parents share a look between themselves that Winter doesn’t fully understand. She’s out of step with whatever this is, and she doesn’t like the feeling, however familiar. “I’ll be a perfect big sister.” She says it firmly, to show she knows what’s going on; she wants to prove it to herself, just as much as anyone else. “I’ll show him everything I know.”

“We know you will, Winter.” 

Her mother’s hand is in her hair again, gently stroking. But with nothing in her other hand, she sways and shifts, just out of time. Her hand drifts, as if reaching out for something, and the only thing there is her husband, stiff and unmoving. 

She catches father by the shoulder and he stares at her, as if inconvenienced. “Perhaps you should lie down.”

“Yes,” mother says, softer still. “Of course.”

*

The months at school pass slower then, with no one for Winter to tell her stories to. She realizes that all the lessons in the world hardly matter when the knowledge exists only inside your own head. It’s a lonely place in there, with so many twisting corridors and dead ends. Long and empty nights spent lying up in bed, just staring at the ceiling.

But then someone else arrives.

Not a brother, but a sister. One who smiles wide and means it.

Weiss laughs and smiles. She clutches at the air with eager palms. She rolls around in her blankets, tangling herself into knots. She’s a mess, almost suffocating herself so many times a single day. Winter volunteers to watch her and never feels bored for even a moment. Every instant is a new excitement, but more than that too. 

This little life that depends on her, that needs her, is a light cast over shadows.

It’s amazing to see someone so happy, so ready to move about inside the world. Someone still looking for her place in it and ready to try. Winter wonders if she was like this once, eager and open. She almost wonders where it went, what changed inside herself, until she hears the shouts from down the hall.

A door opens and slams shut.

Weiss starts to cry. 

Winter tries to calm her. “Shhh,” she says, despite the tremble in her voice.”It’s okay.” She tries wrapping the blankets tight around her sister, to muffle the sound and keep her from thrashing, but if anything Weiss just gets louder. “It’s okay! Weiss, stop.” 

But she doesn’t stop. She gets louder and louder, and Winter feels the heat rising in her own cheeks. 

If she doesn’t quiet down, father will come. It will become so much worse. 

Winter knows what worse looks and feels like. The fear of it is a pit widening in her stomach, dark and vast, like a hole that’s opened underneath her. She feels herself start to fall, and now she’s almost screaming too. “Weiss!”

The door opens with a creak and she freezes in place. Her mouth goes dry, but Weiss doesn’t know better. She just screams.

“Weiss, please,” Winter hisses, but a voice calls to them from the other side of the room.

“It’s alright now, Miss Schnee.” Now that there are two children in the household, father has hired a new man as head of the staff. Winter recognizes his peculiar voice, even though she didn’t hear him approach. She turns her head and he’s just there, hovering behind her. “I can take her.”

“But—”

“Your father is asking for you.”

His eyes are a strange mixture of yellow and brown, shifting from one moment to the next, but there’s something else there too. Winter thinks he knows exactly what it means to be called before her father.

If that look on his face is from pity, she hates it.

She doesn’t need, want, or deserve it. But all she says is, “Alright,” before standing slowly, still rocking Weiss in her arms. 

She hands her over reluctantly and can’t help but resent the way her sister calms so quickly in the arms of the older man. Of course, he’s more experienced. He probably knows how to hold her just right and what to say.

Even so, it leaves Winter feeling just out of step and caught off guard, as usual. 

She re-centers herself by carefully adjusting her posture, standing straighter with hands clasped at her back. “Is father in his office?”

He cradles Weiss to his chest and rocks her gently. Winter doesn’t remember ever being held that way. “Yes,” he says, his voice low and soft in a way that only mother speaks to her. “I assume you know the way?”

“Of course.”

Winter’s been there many times before and she knows what awaits on the other side of the door. To call it a lecture is generous.

On her way down the hall, she fusses with her uniform, straightening her shirt collar where Weiss had pulled things out of place. Father would be displeased to see her looking so disorderly. 

She stops in front of mother’s bedroom; they sleep in separate rooms by now. The door is open, which it seldom is. Winter is surprised to see it, until she notices that the hinge is loose and the lock is broken. Mother’s back is turned to the door, face half-hidden in shadow. Even her reflection is obscured, but there in the dark Winter can see a faint burst of red across her cheek, flowing upward to—

Her father’s voice shouts from down the hallway, cutting sharply through her thoughts. “Winter!”

It’s never good to keep him waiting.

If mother turns to look, Winter doesn’t see it. 

She’s already gone from the doorway, running down the hall as fast as she can. All decorum is forgotten now; there is only a headlong rush into the inevitable. The faster she gets there, the sooner it’s over. 

Step, one two three.

*

The others all call him General.

They say it the same way that the servants speak to her father, with quiet and hushed tones that mean power. Of course Winter knows what the word really means, what his rank really is, but what matters to her is everything else implied in how he lives. It’s the way he moves with so much freedom. The other wealthy elites make a show of being free; they pretend to do whatever they like, but always with one eye on everyone else and anticipating the same in return. 

None of them can make a single move without calculating first. Who will see it and what will they think? What debts will be owed after any misstep? That isn’t freedom or even a very exciting dance. They only move with every movement laid out several steps ahead. You can’t turn the wrong way even once without losing yourself completely.

Ironwood moves with restraint and care, constraining his emotions in a way that’s comfortably familiar, but he never stops to see who’s watching. At the parties and events, where everyone else has their best foot forward and perfect smile set in place, Winter’s even caught him yawning. Everyone else is playing the same game, but he’s made up his own rules. 

She’s watched him more than she knows she should. Other girls her age sometimes watch the older boys or even the men, and they whisper. They giggle with each other in a shared language of a sort. It’s another place she feels misaligned, several paces behind. Sometimes she pretends to care, if they bother to ask her, just to keep those friends that mother wants.

She’s chosen a boy in her class to pretend to watch and to know things about. She makes a list of a few simple facts, to repeat when asked. She knows his height, his hair color, and the way he wears his tie knot. She knows which subjects he excels in and where he needs more work. All these little things she assumes a girl should care about, though she’s never felt genuine interest herself.

But that’s not like her interest in the General either. She isn’t fawning like the other girls, in search of a physical fulfillment or even attention. Winter wants something so much greater than that. She wants answers. 

She wants to ask him so many questions about the world and how he moves through it so freely.

And so she does. At a party where she’s meant to be mingling with the other children of the elite, Winter slips away to approach General Ironwood at the spot he’s claimed for himself against the wall furthest away from the dancing.

He must not like to dance as well.

“Are you busy?” she asks, and immediately regrets it. He’s standing alone in the middle of a party, holding a glass of alcohol that’s nearly full to the brim. What a stupid, stupid question. He must think that she’s an idiot. “I mean,” she nearly stammers, all that careful composure that she’s always worked to maintain quickly slipping through her fingers. “Are you free to talk?”

When the General turns to look at her, his eyes are fixed slightly above her head before drifting down. He anticipated someone older when he heard her voice and now realizes that she’s only a child. The look that adults wear when they know that you’re beneath them starts to slip across his face. It’s a condescending patient smile that leaves Winter’s cheeks hot with growing embarrassment. “I might have a few moments.”

She takes a step back. 

She wants to run away now, desperately, but it would only make things worse. Somehow it would be even more humiliating to admit that she’s embarrassed. “Never mind,” she manages to say, trying to make the words clear and composed, like someone fully in control.

Even if she’s never felt that in her life. 

The General stands even straighter somehow, taller and even more secure in his place. He reaches one hand out to her but it stops midway there when she flinches. It’s an old and equally humiliating instinct, but there are so many of those by now. Some of the marks her father’s left on her reside just beneath the skin.

“No, it’s… fine.” His hand lingers in the air between them for a moment before dropping to his side, which Winter perceives only from the corner of her eye because she can’t bring herself to lift her gaze. “You’re Jacques’ girl, aren’t you?”

There’s heat rising suddenly again, but a different kind. It burns in her throat like her first taste of alcohol. The feeling boils close to her chest as she looks him right in the eye, no more flinching. “My name is Winter Schnee, yes sir. But I am no one’s girl.”

His unblinking stare is like a wall that all the heat welling up inside of Winter shatters against in a hazy mist of need and want. She feels herself instantly deflate, shoulders slouching. The sudden burst of anger and intensity evaporates and leaves her feeling limp.

She sways again, taking a small step back; this time he doesn’t reach for her.

“I understand,” he says with a gentleness that does not match the rest of his demeanor. “You’ll be joining us at the Academy in a few years, won’t you?”

Winter realizes suddenly, sharply, that General Ironwood knows who she is. He doesn’t just recognize the family crest on her sleeve, but knows her age or at least an approximation of it. All this time that she’s been considering, watching, he must have been watching her too.

She can’t help but stand straighter, lifted with pride. “Yes, sir.”

He mirrors her posture, offering the same attentive stance. It feels almost like an act of mutual admiration. “I look forward to it.” For the first time, she notices his gaze has drifted somewhere else, across the room. “Especially if your Semblance is anything like your mother’s.”

Winter doesn’t have to turn to know that mother is there, at the center of a crowd. That she’s smiling and laughing and that, as it has been for some time now, the expression is less convincing than it used to be.

She doesn’t need to look, but does. She turns.

Mother isn’t looking back. She’s facing the crowd ahead of her, across the room, with her back to Winter and a nearly empty glass in her hand. They are all listening intently, judging by the looks on their faces. She must be telling a story; maybe it’s about Winter or Weiss. The other people are laughing too, and smiling. If they realize that mother’s own happiness isn’t real, they don’t show it. 

This is all part of the dance, step one two.

Mother only looks away when a member of the waitstaff, a Faunus with their ears pinned back to keep the occasion sanitary, passes by and mother takes another glass from the offered tray. Even for him, she smiles. She turns.

Her eyes catch Winter’s and she freezes, just for a moment. The smile slips and she takes another drink. And another. 

And another.

Step, one two three.

The smile is back again, but smaller.

*

It turns out that fighting is a lot like dancing, except that Winter excels at it.

Somehow this rhythm is already there inside her bones. She feels it churning in her belly when she takes up a blade in practice or against any opposition. She can anticipate and analyze their movements; she can see their weaknesses, even and perhaps especially the ones they don’t see in themselves. 

It’s easy with the other students her own age. There’s so little challenge that it hardly feels like a proper game at all. They thrust and she parries. They swing and she spins away. She’s never going to find the impact needed to unlock her Semblance with competition like this. The dance is almost like sleepwalking.

The instructors are challenging, at least, even if they also have far too many tells. Most people wear all of their emotions on their face, all of the time. It’s a weakness, but certainly not one Winter will discourage when it makes her own life so much easier.

Even the most subtle fighter will usually indicate their intentions with a glance. She catches them studying her left side and she knows where they’re likely to strike. She can anticipate and react in turn. 

Step, one two. One two three.

This is the dance her body was built for. Even the mistakes are instructive. The pain, the way every limb is aching at the end of a long day of practice, is so useful. Memories made this sharply never fade. 

After all, Winter remembers so many moments with her father. Even those she’d rather not.

*

“There’s something I want to show you,” mother says.

Father isn’t home, which is the only reason mother has left her room at all. There’s no bottle with her and no smell on her breath; they must be trying for another child, the boy that father never stopped wanting. Her hair looks brushed, at least, more recently than Winter would have expected. She’s put in an effort.

Winter is exhausted from her lessons the day before. She wants to protest, to rest a little longer, but her mother hasn’t looked at her with such focus in so long. So they walk together. She follows to the end of the hall past father’s study, then several doors beyond it. Winter seldom ventures here, and never when father is home.

Weiss has joined them on the way, walking several steps behind her sister who slows to let little legs catch up. 

Mother doesn’t seem to notice, still walking on ahead. “Your grandfather collected many things. Broken hearts among them, I’m sure.” This time she does look back and grins. 

She must have meant it as a joke. Winter pretends to laugh as a gesture of kindness, while Weiss only stares ahead and walks, uncertain what any of this means.

Mother continues. “And weaponry too, of course.”

Winter knows that much already. She’s studied grandfather’s photos and ledgers. He has weapons of all kinds, another inheritance for his family. She knows the archive and collection, but has never seen them face-to-face.

There are many rooms that no one enters inside the Schnee mansion, even members of the family. But mother stops today in front of one of those doors. Her eyes are so bright as she fumbles with the keys.

Her hands shake and she drops them.

Weiss picks them up for her and mother smiles. She strokes the hair back from Weiss’s face, the way she used to do with Winter, but hasn’t for so long. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

She fits the key into the lock and turns it sharply.

The lock clicks like something springing open inside of Winter’s chest. She feels emotions pushed down for so long lifting up inside of her. She can almost feel it on her tongue, this swelling sense of want.

She wants her family and its legacy. 

The door opens and she steps inside. The room is faintly lit with row after row of weaponry carefully arranged. Winter is so distracted by the space and the near religious sense of significance surrounding it that she misses most of the conversation at the door.

Weiss doesn’t come inside for now. This is Winter’s day.

Mother’s eyes are only on her now. Later Winter might wish that she had paid more attention. That she remembered the details of what her mother looked like leading her across the threshold and into this strange place between past and future. 

But all she sees is the blade ahead of her. 

It’s her past, her family’s legacy, her grandfather himself, calling her forward into the future. She steps, one two three.

Her mother’s voice is right behind her, saying, “This one is special. This one is two things, actually, though it only looks like one.” Her hand is light on Winter’s shoulder. “It’s like you, isn’t it? More than what it seems.” 

“Can I touch it?”

Winter doesn’t know what she’ll do if her mother says no. Her throat is so dry and her palms almost itch. Even the sword itself seems to vibrate with a desire to be touched, to be held, to belong.

Maybe it is like her after all.

“Of course you can,” her mother says so softly it’s like a sigh. “It’s yours, Winter.”

She will never remember what her mother’s face looked like in that moment, but the sound of her voice sticks in Winter’s ear forever. 

_It’s yours._

*

After that, the world opens up for Winter the way that her blades do, past and future, one in each hand. She finds new balance and an even clearer destination. By the time Whitley arrives, he’s little more than a distraction, for her and for mother too.

Winter sees the way she looks at him, like all her regrets given human form. Sniveling and imperious, he is already so much like their father that Winter senses he won’t need protection, not in the way that Weiss still does.

Weiss, who learned to stop crying or laughing, in the same way they all do. Instead she is still and perfect, like something preserved under glass. Her voice is beautiful enough that father has softened with her, at least for now. She is useful for the family’s image in ways that Winter never was. She flourishes in public spaces and events, so naturally rhythmic and composed. 

It’s for the best, so that Winter worries a little less when she’s away from home and can’t put herself between her father and her sister. Because this also is hers. This burden to defend the family against anything. The duality of that responsibility set flush against her own hatred for the man who leads their household. 

It took Winter such a horribly long time to realize that what she feels for him is hate. It seems so simple now, so obvious.

She thinks mother knew it sooner, even through the thick fog of the alcohol. She’s always been so good at perceiving; that’s why she tries so hard to look away. Mother pretends not to notice the way that Winter is drifting from the family. Weiss is focused on her own efforts, the busy schedule laid out ahead of her, so that she doesn’t see it coming. Mother sees, or at least she could.

Instead, she looks away, deeper and deeper into the bottle.

They all know so little about her now. Her life at the Academy is another layer kept concealed. She tucks every friendship and heartbreak away, buttoned in tight and close to her chest. She adjusts her shirt collar and stands ever straight.

Just like that, the feelings can fade.

She is more than a culmination of heartache and misery strung together in the shape of a person, no matter what her worst nights might tell her. She is also Winter Schnee, the best in her class, and defender of her family’s legacy against all the damage her father can and will do. Soon she will graduate and join the Atlesian military, to serve something even larger than herself or her name.

To eventually, finally, have a purpose and a place inside the larger pattern, just as General Ironwood has foreseen it.

She has practiced how she will tell her father. More than that, she’s fantasized about it. Winter knows exactly how Jacques Schnee’s face will distort with rage when he realizes his precious little prodigy has developed a mind of her own. 

Because in the end, this moment will belong to Winter. It was General Ironwood who first approached her with the suggestion, but the choice was always hers. 

After all, the General isn’t the one who’s spent hours of his life imagining what father would look like choking on his meal, turning purple over dinner, and finally collapsing into the steak sauce. Winter has, of course. 

More than once, she’s watched it all play out on the darkened stage inside her head.

Mother would scream, showing real life for the first time in years. That is, if she was even there to join them; she has dinner alone in her room so many nights lately. Winter isn’t entirely sure what Whitley would do. Maybe he would cry; it’d probably be good for him.

And Weiss? She would try to save him, of course.

The reality is that Winter would sit by and let her. She doesn’t have the killer instinct she wishes that she did, even now. That’s why she has to plan things out so carefully, every conversation. One surprise and the emotions still come rushing back, at least when it comes to her family. Other things she can lock away inside, throw away any key, but family touches some nerve still so raw and exposed.

So she prepares. She readies herself to speak to her father, savors the idea so much that it almost leaves her breathless. 

But mother is another thing entirely. Even now, when speaking to her feels like gazing into an open grave, Winter still can’t imagine disappointing the woman who used to stroke her hair and make her smile. Even if it was largely in Winter’s own mind.

Even if it was only a few moments.

So she waits, and the days draw closer and closer to her graduation.

*

“As soon as you’re finished with your final days of class, I want you to join me in the office.” Father is speaking with his mouth full, as he often does when they’re alone as a family. He doesn’t consider chewing before he speaks time well spent when he could be commanding his family into obedience instead. “I don’t know why you even bothered to get that hunter’s license in the first place, but you won’t be wasting any more time on their silly paperwork and procedures.”

Mother isn’t with them. She’s had a headache all day, or so Klein said when Winter was the only one who bothered to ask where she was. This isn’t how she wanted this to happen, but maybe it’s easier this way, without empty sadness watching her from across the table too.

Because she can’t keep the lies going any longer. “I won’t—”

She doesn’t get any further than that before her father’s knife clatters to his plate. “You will not what?” 

Each word is said like a sharp thrust into bone. Winter’s younger self would have flinched, but now she looks him in the eye. “I’m not going to work for you. I’ve already told General Ironwood I will be applying to join the military.”

Father’s face doesn’t disappoint. Even after all this time imagining how he would look, Winter still couldn’t picture anything as perfect as the way he balloons with agitation, swelling up in his seat and bursting from his chair. “Over my dead body!” Perhaps the wrong choice of words, Winter thinks. And she smirks. “Oh, you think this is funny, do you?”

He looms above her, leaning across the table. 

The knife is just there, in front of him, and for a single insane moment Winter thinks that he’s going to reach for it. 

Or she wonders if she might instead.

“Winter,” her sister’s voice cuts through the red hazy fog shifting up inside her.

Winter blinks, but doesn’t look away from her father. She doesn’t dare. “It’s fine, Weiss.” Her voice doesn’t shake, not even from the anger. She wonders if he notices that, how rare it is for her to sound so even and self-assured when speaking with him, or if he even sees that much of her at all. “I’ve thought this through. I’m sorry, father, but I don’t want to work with you.”

“No,” he sneers, straightening again. “You’re not sorry.”

She can see it on his face. He’s already decided to blame this all on Ironwood. He’s going to yell at him as soon as this conversation is over. He’s going to take it all out on a man instead of Winter, for once, because he thinks this decision is above anything she’s capable of. All that satisfaction at his anger, his resentment, the fact that he would finally know what she thinks of him, just ripped away in an instant.

All the pretense is gone. 

“You’re right,” she says, shrugging. “I’m not sorry. I don’t want to be anywhere near you.”

That, at least, still reached through.

Without thinking, without another word, father picks up his plate and throws it against the wall just inches away from Winter’s head. Her heart jolts, thumpthumpthump, one two three. She swallows, ready to say more, but what else is there to say?

Her father heaves with another heavy breath, out and in. He straightens slowly this time, pieces carefully falling back into place. He adjusts his hair, brushing it back from his eyes. He checks his cufflinks and smiles. “I think you should return to your dorm room tonight.” His lips twist. “And stay there, until you’ve graduated. Maybe by then you’ll know some manners.”

Sometimes fighting is a bit like dancing, and Winter has never been very good at dancing. “But—”

“Don’t bother your mother on the way out,” he says, pausing for servants to open the dining room door. “You’ll only cause her pain.” 

It shuts sharply behind him.

In the silence that follows, the only sound is Winter’s heartbeat pounding in her ears.

That is, until Whitley cuts in. “How could you?”

That stupid simpering face with features so similar to father’s. He could never understand, even if he tried.

But worse than that is Weiss, reaching out for her with one hand. Winter knows if she slows down, if she lets herself be comforted by her sister, she’s going to fall apart.

She’s going to see the lifetime ahead of her and all she leaves behind, separated in such sharp clarity. 

The past in one hand, the future in the other.

One day Weiss will be at the Academy. Then maybe she’ll join the military too. Maybe.

But probably she’s going to stay with father, working at his side. 

The thought of that alone is nearly suffocating. So Winter doesn’t allow herself to think it, or to really think at all. She stands instead and pulls away. “I should pack my things,” she says, and walks out the same door.

Behind her, it closes softer, as if she was never there at all.

*

Across the threshold, she goes, and down the hallway to her room. Or what was once her room. Never again, she supposes.

it could be sad if she slowed long enough to think. 

Instead, she walks, while making plans. What she needs to do next, and how best to do it. Step, one two three. One foot ahead of the other. One plan leading to the next. 

This is the rhythm she was made for. It’s ceaseless and churning, just like the feelings that burn inside of her every waking moment.

*

Mother’s door is shut tight.

Winter lingers just outside it, fingertips resting on the handle. Father told her to stay away, but she never does what he tells her, not anymore. She could step through, could say her goodbyes.

But there’s something else too. A voice inside saying that he’s right.

That she does all of this knowing it will cause her mother pain. That saying goodbye is a selfish and self-serving impulse. Just more of the endless suffering the Schnee family inflicts on one another for the sake of proper etiquette.

She’s going to have to apologize to him sometime in the next few days. Winter realizes it slowly as she walks away from mother’s door.

If she wants to remain in Weiss’s life at all, she’s going to have to grovel. 

Perhaps if Winter were only a little more perverse, as cruel as she wishes she could be, she would ask her mother exactly that. In all this time, through all these years, how has she learned to swallow her pride well enough to live inside this family? 

How does she keep the dance going without a stumble?

Of course, the answer is that she doesn’t. That there’s no more pride left to give and she’s fallen too far already.

Eventually, in exchange for the privilege of being allowed to play at all, the game will consume them both. This is another kind of currency, a deal that only benefits father. The only answer is not to play a part. Maybe one day that choice will be hers to really make, on her own terms, instead of for the sake of her sister. 

For now, she steps into the room that’s no longer hers.

She shuts the door. There is no lock, and hasn’t been in years.

She seals the feelings up inside and focuses on next steps and the future. She takes a long, deep breath in, then out. 

And another, and another.

One two three.

**Author's Note:**

>  **1.** This was written for day two of Schnee Week! The theme was “Willow.” But also, and perhaps more importantly, I was inspired by [this art by catalyswitch of Willow letting Winter pick out her sword](https://catalyswitch.tumblr.com/post/641341829406769152/schnee-week-day-1-swords-it-has-always-been-a). She was kind enough to let me write something for it. Thanks for letting me play with your ideas!
> 
>  **2.** As always, a thank you to my very kind and patient beta, [sbrn10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sbrn10). I came up with this fic with vey little warning and I appreciate her willingness to go along with it on such short notice, especially when the content wasn't entirely pleasant.
> 
>  **3.** Yes the title is from Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me).” Why do you ask?
> 
>  **4.** I feel like it should probably go without saying but maybe it doesn’t that not everything Winter perceives is entirely correct as she sees it. One might also that Winter is very good at one kind of deception, self-deception, but she’s not self-aware enough for that to appear in the prose explicitly. Perhaps it comes across anyway. (The dream!)


End file.
